


Fairest Of All The Stars

by The_Wavesinger



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Epistolary, F/F, Third Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-22 17:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9616985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/pseuds/The_Wavesinger
Summary: A letter from Gilraen to Arwen.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elleth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/gifts).



> The title is from Sappho.

 

My dearest Arwen,

I miss you. I miss you, and it has not yet been a full week since we parted. _I miss you._

I miss dancing with you in the moonlit gardens. I miss the walks we took through the thickets around our home (and how strange it is, that Rivendell became _home_ only as I prepared to leave!). I miss kissing you, and I especially miss kissing you in that alcove with the statue of Varda, where the sun falls so perfectly on your hair, making it shine golden. I miss you holding you close to me in our bed at night—it will take me a long while to get used to sleeping alone again.

I know this is not forever. I know we will meet again, and within the year. And yet—I miss you.

But I must not dwell on that; I will tell you, instead, of the Angle.

I have missed my people, Arwen, but I am a stranger among them now. I am older than most of them, and I am the mother of the Heir besides. The younger ones fear me, and I do not like that. I do not like that _at all_.

Some, though, have begun to soften already. _To my charms_ , you would have said, and who knows, you may be right. Though I think that the herbcraft I learnt in Rivendell has more to do with it.

For the times are getting darker, Arwen. More and more of our Rangers, I learn, are not coming back from where they have wandered. Aragorn is still South, still on his quests and journeys. (But Elladan, Arwen. I am glad he got over what infatuation he had with you—you are mine, he is my son, and I cannot even think about it—but he goes and chooses someone even _more_ impossible to fall in love with! And someone who _returns_ his love, and whose returning of that love makes his path yet darker. For the Heir of Elendil must have children, and our people are not kind to those who—but never mind. I ramble. We must speak of these fears when we are together again, not in impersonal ink.) I am _afraid_.

The Shadow is returning. I can feel it. I do not know what to do, Arwen. What can we do against such evil? I am neither Isildur nor Elendil nor Gil-galad. _Aragorn_ is neither Isildur not Elendil nor Gil-galad. What hope have we against the Darkness?

 _What hope have we?_ I can hear you saying, and I can _feel_ your laugh in my bones. Laugh at your lover, Arwen! I do not have the knowledge you have; _amdir_ , at least, is fast slipping from our grasp. And before I found you, I would have said _estel_ was lost, too. I fear what would have happened to me had I not found you, Arwen.

But enough of dark thoughts. I have been re-learning weaving; it is a skill that I had forgotten, but it is forgotten no more. I will make you baskets, Arwen, and as decidedly unromantic as that sounds, I know you will find them beautiful, and, more to the point, beautiful.

...I am getting silly. This, my dearest, is because I _miss you_.

You are my light, my hope, beautiful, and I hope that I see you soon. And since I hope that—I hope also that I see you in the morning-light upon the banks of our secret stream, wet from bathing with your hair flowing. You will have been eating strawberries, and when I kiss you, I will taste their bite. And I will pull you back into the water, and kiss you, and then—

(I will practice holding my breath.)

This letter will not reach you for some time, and I am quite sure I will pine until I get a reply. (See, not only do you make me feel young, you make me _act_ young too!)

I love you, my Evenstar.

May the Starkindler guide your path and protect you from harm!

Your beloved,  
Gilraen

 


End file.
